


I Have Been Watching Your Palms

by geektastic



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Captain Uhura, F/F, F/M, Femslash, First Officer T'Pring, M/M, background Spirk, because backstory, bisexual!T'pring, eventual unicorn dog shenanigans, lesbian!Uhura, tiny baby vulcans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-05-13 22:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5719441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geektastic/pseuds/geektastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of two women, from two worlds, with one destiny. The usual story of the enduring love between the Enterprise's Captain and Vulcan First Officer - but it's not the usual suspects. Alternatively: lesbians! In spaaaaaaaaaaace! And the unicorn dog lives, goddamnit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Our story starts with young T'Pring meeting her husband-to-be Spock for the first time. Who likes baby Vulcans? I do! And if you don't, tiny gay Uhura is next chapter okay so stick around anyway. 
> 
> Love to silkewilder for keeping my somewhat loose appreciation for TOS cannon in check, soz about the various bits of your advice I am ignoring for various reasons, like the fact that the random capitalisation ShiKahr annoys me too much to write it in the most commonly accepted way. (Seriously? Who taught these guys grammar wth, Vulcans.) 
> 
> Translations for vulcan terms provided upon mouse-over.

When T'Pring was seven years old, her mother sat her down at the kitchen table and asked her if she would meet with a prospective bondmate. T'Pring didn't answer for a long time. She could feel, through the maternal bond, the small knot of tension her mother was unpicking, and felt guilty for having caused it. Her young mind had none of her mother's discipline to soothe the emotion looming large in her throat.

It had just been the two of them for so long. Her father was a diplomat, working throughout the federation, away for years at a time. She had little more than a handful of memories of him actually living in their home. He was like a fictional character her mother spoke of sometimes, appearing every now and again on a holoscreen (when he was afforded the luxury of a subspace transmission) to play the role of ‘father’. Her mother was an exemplary caregiver, and furthermore an accomplished geneticist whose seemingly omniscient scientific knowledge fed T’Pring’s own boundless curiosity.             T’Pring had never considered living with anyone other than her mother. She knew that, one day, she would grow up and be bonded. But that had been a distant, abstract sort of future. Now it was being presented so directly, she found herself faced with a quite unmanageable feeling of distress. It wriggled through her mental grasp right onto her face, to form an undeniable frown. Her mother reached across the table and placed a hand over T'Pring’s own. The practiced calm of fully-fledged Surakian discipline glowed into T'Pring’s mind as her mother helped her to weed out each little thread of fear and anxiety, untangling the dark emotional ligaments until all tension bled from her.

“It is just a meeting - to discover how compatible you may be.”

“Will you also attend?”

“I will be there the entire time.”

“What is his name?”

  
  


Had T'Pring been inclined to speculate on what manner of individual her mother might deem appropriate to become her daughter’s telsu, she might have imagine a boy somewhat like those few students of hers from the VSA that mother spoke of in particularly favourable terms. Ambitious, focussed, rigorous in intellectual pursuits. She would not have imagined Spock.

Amanda smiled warmly when she greeted them at the door. T'Pring found herself fascinated with the expression, it seemed to embolden the message of goodwill embedded in Amanda’s ta’al, and bring to the forefront all the most aesthetically pleasing aspects of her face.

“T'Pring, I haven’t seen you since you were a little dot! Oh, you’ve grown so pretty.” Amanda said, as she ushered them into the house.

“A dot?” asked T'Pring.

“She means since you were very young, and thus very small, like a dot is small.” A small boy with compellingly curious eyes was almost in the hall – almost, as he seemed unwilling to relinquish the small amount of cover that standing hallway in the doorway to the next room granted him.

“Thank-you, Spock, my little translator.”

“Thanks are illogical.” He muttered into the wall. Edging close to her mother’s side, T'Pring offered a timid ta’al.

“I am T'Pring.”

The boy nodded, arm emerging from the safety of the doorway to return her ta’al.

“When you were a baby,” said T'Pring’s mother, “I worked on a project to create viable offspring between parents who were genetically incompatible – a human and a Vulcan.”

T'Pring knew this; it was spoken of often at the VSA. A controversial project, and a remarkable scientific breakthrough, it had made her mother’s reputation – for better and worse. Between Amanda’s clear human features, and Spock’s curiously round eyes, the conclusion was easy to draw. Spock drew further back into the doorway, his ears turning the dark green of the spike-leaved desert trees in the front yard.

“This is T’Via, Spock. She is a very dear friend to you father and I. She made you possible. Definitely the most precious thing anyone has ever done for us.” The last was said mostly to T'Via, who inclined her head graciously.

“It was an immensely rewarding project on all counts. And should things go accordingly, perhaps your family’s joy may become my family’s joy also.”

Spock was pointedly studying the floor, the dark green points of his ears addressing T'Pring directly. T'Pring returned their attention, taking in their very normal Vulcan form and colouring (the green tinge of the blush quite normal for a young child, at any rate – when he was older her would gain more control over such tawdry cardiovascular evidence of emotional distress), compared to the roundness of his wide eyes – so very like Amanda’s – and his eyebrows that slanted away from the peculiarly curved form of the eye sockets beneath. There was no logic to eyebrows that grew in a pattern that defied a clearly more human brow bone. She suspected he might pluck them into a more decisively Vulcan shape, in an effort to conceal his mixed ancestry. While she could understand the reasoning that would lead to such a decision, T'Pring found the choice ultimately illogical. His mixed ancestry was what made him so entirely unique. He was quite extraordinary. She turned head to look up at her mother, aware of newfound trust and gratitude in the ways she chose to guide her daughter’s life.

“You have chosen me a bondmate who is, as a being, a scientifically anomalous phenomenon.”

At this, Spock, who had been edging back through the doorway, fled entirely. T'Pring looked to Amanda, who was frowning softly after him.

“Was it something I said?”

            Spock had seemed to withdraw further with every word she said to him. By the time their evening with Spock’s family came to a close, T'Pring had accepted that it was unlikely he would wish to contact with her again. It was strange, considering how distressed she’d been at the thought of meeting Spock to begin with, how disappointed she was at the thought of not meeting him again. She was therefore quite uncertain how to react, when he appeared in her classroom.

            T’pring and Spock had met during a month’s pause in the Shi’kahr schooling schedule. With exam results graded and students re-assigned to their new academic programmes, a new term of schooling had begun. Spock had sat a series of exams following his family’s return from Earth. The Shi’khar educational authority had been quite convinced that two years’ worth of Terran schooling would have done irreparable damage to his academic career, but Spock had achieved more than adequately against their strict Vulcan standards, and thus came to be placed in the astrophysics module alongside T'Pring. For T'Pring, this created a problem. She was terrible at astrophysics. It was nothing like biology and chemistry, where all information served to describe satisfyingly tangible processes – in astrophysics the numbers swam in empty space; abstract descriptions of distant, opaque concepts.

Upon meeting Spock, she had in some way offended him. (She still did not know why or how.) If he was to be her classmate, it would be greatly beneficial to restore herself in his esteem – but how was she to achieve that when the only class she shared with him was one in which she felt as slow-witted as a fat dokai bird? To compound matters, Spock excelled in astrophysics quite noticeably, which would only make T'Pring’s own failings even more apparent.

Despite the fact that T'Pring was the only of their classmates that Spock had any prior social interaction with, he did not acknowledge her in any way. Initially, she was unsure whether it was appropriate to breach his imposed silence – or if perhaps she should accept things as they were. But the next day, having considered her options further after meditation, she came to the conclusion that if she had offended him, she could not make matters worse by asking how, and seeing if anything could be done to rectify the matter. He may not want to be her telsu, but his parents and her mother had a significant relationship, it would not do for T'Pring to cause any disruption to that.

They spent that afternoon in a wide, dark hall. The only light came from the towering holo that filled the front of the hall, where a vivid quasar spat energy into space. Reeling text on each side captured its violent, bright reactions into numerical precision. The rustle of a whisper near the back of the room disrupted her focus. She turned to glare the offending parties back into silence, but was stilled by the mention of a familiar name.

“…said that the Sarek once commanded only the greatest respect in Shi’khar. Until he debased himself with that Terran.”

“My mother said the fact that Sarek thinks it appropriate to bring his pet human and their hybrid bastard back to Shi’khar shows how entirely twisted his reasoning has become. She says we should not be forced to share our learning space with the hybrid.”

T'Pring caught the speaker’s eye – a square lump of a boy named Stonn – and held his gaze pointedly, so that he knew he was being overheard. The whisperers fell silent and Stonn returned his gaze to the holo-projected quasar.

When the lecture had finished, T'Pring paused to check her comm. There were no messages, and she could have only been looking down for a moment – but Spock had already disappeared from the room. He must have departed with unseemly haste. Disappointed, she fell into step at the back of the throng working slowly out of the main doors. But, when she had finally cleared them, she heard Stonn’s voice again, carrying over the crowd of children.

“Come away, Sopek, we ought not be speaking with the hybrid at all.”

“He is not Vulcan, and he should not be here, and I intend to prove it.”

“And how do you intend to prove that?” Spock looked tiny, facing these two overgrown, slightly thuggish boys, but he eyed them levelly, a defiant jut to his frail-looking jaw. Sopek approached, with Stonn looming, cross-armed and intimidating over his shoulder. A small cluster of children had gathered with prurient curiosity.

“How difficult it must be, suffering those uncontrolled human emotions, knowing that you are the unnatural product of a base fetish, unwanted by either of the worlds that bore you.”

“Sopek!” T'Pring’s voice brushed roughly past the control of her mind, and she had crossed through the parting crowd before she was entirely sure what she was doing. “If you think your behaviour here bears any honour for the Vulcan race, you are sadly mistaken. Your words disgrace the teachings of Surak.”

“Why do I hear raised voices?” All the children having finally filtered out of the lecture hall, their supervisor, Koss, had followed them, locking the lecture hall doors behind her. T'Pring wilted, turning to face her teacher. “I allowed my anger with Sopek to control my actions.”

“In your meditations this evening, I advise you to consider how you may have prevented this lapse in control.”

“I will do so. And I will ask my mother for her guidance in this issue.”

“Very good. And Sopek, do you feel confident in your ability to resolve your disagreement with T'Pring in a rational manner?”

“I feel confident in my ability to remain rational, yes, T’kehr.”

If T’kehr Koss had noticed Sopek’s twist around the edge of the question, she did not pursue it. She nodded satisfied, and fell back to stand at the top of the steps to watch over the crowd of children as they slowly disappeared into their parents’ transports. Sopek, finally making at least one wise choice, removed himself to the opposite end of the stairs, and T'Pring was left with both Spock, and for some reason Stonn, gazing at her. She raised a ta’al to Spock, and he returned it slowly, just as Amanda’s voice broke the tense silence between them.

“Spock! Over here, honey.” Her cheerful endearment was like a shaft of sunlight, uncomfortably bright through the middle of the fraught little triangle of Spock, T'Pring, and Stonn. Spock seemed unwilling to leave, but could not bring himself to disobey his mother. He walked between T'Pring and Stonn, and into the open door of the transport. As the door to the small vehicle slid shut, Stonn took a step towards T'Pring, his eyes still fixed on her.

“Why do you defend him?”

“Why do you attack him?”

“My mother says he’s a dangerous dilution of Vulcans’ superior genetic legacy.”

“Is your mother a geneticist?”

“No.”

“And are you able to think for yourself?”

“I had no reason to doubt her accuracy. But,” he hesitated here, and then seemed to find his resolve “I respect your intellect too much to ignore your opinion. Which is why I would like to know why you defend him.”

T'Pring was surprised. She had been in Stonn’s class group three times thus far in her time at school, but they had never been particularly close associates. She wondered when he had had opportunity to develop this admiration for her intellect.

“Racial purity is an unsound ideal. It is the product of xenophobia, nothing more. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. To defend him is in line with the teachings of Surak, and it is logical.”

Stonn nodded, “Though I have never yet had reason to suspect my mother of flawed logic, I will consider your opinion. As you say, I need to discover my own thoughts on the matter.”

 

The next day, it was Spock who approached T'Pring after class.

            "Why did you defend me?"

            T'Pring's head shot up from her comm, caught by surprise. Taking her hesitation a for confusion, Spock specified "Yesterday, to Sopek and Stonn. Why did you choose to speak in my defense?"

            "Sopek was incorrect in his assertions. You are not the product of anything base - quite the opposite. The genetic research that allowed for your conception was a process of great intellectual rigor and commitment. And the intellect you possess in your own person recommends you as a valuable asset to our primary academy."

            "You don't think I'm a freak?"

            "I think you seem to have picked up a habit of more colloquial expression on earth," Spock opened his mouth to quickly correct his momentary lapse into un-Vulcan inspecificity, but T'Pring carried on "and I am not sure what exact definition of 'freak' you are implying, but in regards to your character in general, I have not nearly enough information to make an informed judgement." She paused for just a moment, regarding him, and resolved to push on over the little knot of nervousness that hovered under her next words “Spock, when we first met, did I cause some offense to you?” 

            Up until this point in the conversation, the small shy boy T'Pring had first met had seemed to have uncurled into an upright, steady-gazed young Vulcan. But now his posture shrank once more, eyes dropping to the flecked lino of the lecture hall floor. 

            “You called me an ‘anomalous phenomenon’. I assumed this meant that, like so many of the Vulcans I have met since moving to Shi’khar, you found my heritage distasteful.”

            “I find your heritage fascinating.”

            Spock remained determined on his study of the lino, but the anxious set of his mouth slackened. T'Pring took this as encouragement. 

            “There is a favour I had been hoping you might grant me,” she began, “I find astrophysics quite a challenging area of study, and I have noticed that you excel in this area. I was wondering if you might give me some guidance in my studies.”

            As if she had uttered some secret passcode, Spock’s eyes jumped up to meet hers and, for just a moment, a shatteringly human smile spread across his face - before it was quickly subsumed into slightly-embarrassed Vulcan dignity. 

            “I will endeavour to provide what help I may. I have heard you are the top in our year-group in Vulcanian zoology and Vulcan biology. Perhaps we could have a reciprocal arrangement, I find my knowledge in zoology to be sorely lacking behind those of my peers, and though my knowledge of Vulcan biology is adequate, I find I am particularly interested in gaining a higher ranking in that class also.”

            “We have an elegant arrangement, then.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter than I was planning it to be because trying to write the full chapter I had in my story plan was getting wayyyy to slow. I have much too much going on in my life to update this thing regularly - sorry! But I'm gonna try shorter to chapters to get slightly more frequent updates. So we'll see how that goes. I definitely like it too much to abandon it. Ao3 ate my formatting and I cbf fixing it this time, so we've got fanfic-standard formatting instead of my preferred standard prose formatting. None of you care about that but I do okay. If you spot any typos please let me know. 
> 
> ANYWAY: we've met baby!T'pring - time to check in with baby!Uhura. Alternative chapter title: smol and gay in kenya.

Nyota was awkward. Sometimes she felt like all the other kids talked a slightly different language, somehow. Like, beneath the swahili words she could hear, there was some secret meaning only kids could understand - but she’d been left out of being taught how to hear it. Grown-ups were much better. They spoke swahili and terran standard, and other languages she knew she could learn if she wanted.

Very soon, she wouldn’t be a kid at all - this was her final year of primary school. She’d already been accepted into her soon-to-be new school, a prestigious secondary school in town. She’d have to commute in on the monorail every day with all the suited city workers. Almost every other kid in her year was going to the local secondary school, just two blocks away from their primary. But Nyota was special. ‘Gifted’, the teachers said. ‘Too clever for her own good’, her mother said - but with the special smile that meant almost everything about Nyota was her favourite thing ever. She wouldn’t know a single person at her new school, and she might not see any of the kids from her primary ever again. She could hardly wait.

There was only one other person in the class who seemed as eager to move up to secondary school as Nyota was, the new girl, Nyapal. Nyapal had the longest braids Nyota had ever seen, and she daily resisted the impulse to pick them up and carry them behind Nyapal like a bridesmaid carrying a Christian bride’s trailing veil. They hung down and brushed the tips of the grass as she sat on a low-hanging branch of the big olive tree, at the very end of the field, furthest away from the classrooms.

“I vidcommed my friend Hiba last night.” Nyapal said, bouncing lightly on the flexible branch. She’d talked about Hiba, her best friend from her old school back in Sudan, a lot when she first joined Nyota’s class. But she hadn’t talked about her for a while, getting sucked into the current of her new school and new life in Kenya.

“She has a boyfriend.” She said this very proudly, as if it was somehow an accomplishment. Nyota made a face. “Ew.”

“She says he’s the cutest boy in the orchestra.”

“Boys are ugly. Even the cutest boy is still ugly. And,” Nyota said, with the confidence of one delivering a final, decisive blow, “they smell.”

“You smell.”

“You smell more.”

“You smell the most.”

“I smell the most like a flower.”

“You smell the most like cat poooooo!” Nyapal shrieked with laughter, sending the narrow leaves around her chattering with her movement. Giggling cross-legged on the ground, Nyota tried to catch the couple of leaves she’d dislodged, but couldn’t chase their flickering movements close enough. A moment later, Nyapal’s feet landed on the ground, and she dropped to mirror Nyota’s folded pose, leaning forward conspiratorially.

“Don’t you like anyone, though?”

Nyota felt suddenly anxious, like there was a right or wrong answer to this question, and she had no idea what it might be. She held a broken-off piece of twig in one hand, and started scratching at the dirt, sucked dry between the tree roots. She shook her head.

“Not even…” Nyapal leaned right down, and twisted her neck around, poking her head right into the line of Nyota’s sight, “...Moyo Kabando.”

Nyapal let her head drop right into Nyota’s lap as she sighed the name of the Kenyan holostar whose perfect face decorated the background screen of her school PADD, surrounded by a litany of cartoon hearts and stars.

“You can be Mrs. Kabando.” Said Nyota.

“And what will you be? A nun?”

“A starship captain.”

Nyapal leapt to her feet again, striking a dramatic pose “Captain Nyota and Mrs. Kabando! Famous best friends! All the paparazzi will follow us everywhere!”

“I won’t let them on my ship. And it’s Captain Uhura. You can’t use your first name when you’re a starship captain, it’s not proper enough.”

 

They walked home from school together, dusty concrete burning their feet as their sandals swung from their hands. They came the corner where their paths diverged, Nyota's house in sight and Nyapal’s beyond where the road to the right dipped into a gentle valley.

"Bye, Mrs. Kabando!"

"Bye, Captain Uhura!"

Nyapal sprang into a rigid salute, and then darted forward to place a quick kiss on Nyota's cheek. It was somehow shockingly soft, and Nyota was caught still for a moment as Nyapal skipped away, her schoolbag bouncing noisily with each step. As she turned to walk home, Nyota thought she could feel and impression of Nyapal’s lips lingering on the patch of skin where they had touched.

 

Nyota dumped her schoolbag in the hall and followed the sound of foreign accents over-acting tragic romances to the lounge, where a fuzzy halo of black-and-silver-sprinkled hair blocked the part of the screen where an actress had just flung herself in despair.

On the couch, in her dressing gown, watching a terrible soap, was not where Nyota usually expected her mother to be when she got home. Usually, Nyota was first home, and sat at the kitchen bench doing homework until one, or both, of her parents made it home from work.

She curls in next to her mother on the couch, the flannel of her dressing gown soft against Nyota’s skin.

“How come you’re home already?”

M’Umbha Uhura quietened the television with a flick of her wrist and turned to face her daughter. When she spoke there was a strange tone pulling down at her words.

“I had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and I didn’t want to go back to work after.”

When M’Umbha didn’t say anything else, Nyota’s thoughts drifted to the PADD in her bag. There were messages from her friends, and homework assignments, and all her usual afternoon routines waiting for her. But the odd tension hadn’t left her mother’s face, and her eyes still held on Nyota’s face like she wanted her to stay. So Nyota pulled her legs up under her and said the first thing that came to mind.

“Nyapal asked me if I liked anyone.” This surprised M’Umbha out of her own strange tension, and she smiled.

“Do you?”

“I don’t think so. But, I don’t know how I’d know.”

M’Umbha laughed. “You’ll know it when you feel it.” She said. But Nyota frowned, unconvinced. “How do you know you’re in love with Dad?” She asked.

“Hmm. Well, it’s like a warm flower in your chest. When it opens you can feel its brightness.”

“I don’t have any flowers growing anywhere in my body.”

“What about little seedlings?”

“I don’t think I’d _like_ to have anything growing in my body. That sounds uncomfortable.”

“I love you.”

“I know that. That’s not the kind of love I’m talking about, that’s different.”

“I know,” M’Umbha laughed, “I’m just saying.”

“Oh. Love you too.”

“I went to the doctor’s for a test.” The strangeness pulling at the bottom of her words came back. Nyota felt it unsettle her, pulling at her skin.

“What kind of test?”

“To find out why I’ve been so tired and feeling sick all the time. They think they might know why, but they had to take some of my cells to check.”

“That’s good. That they know”

“Well, maybe.” M’Umbha paused, hovering over her next sentence. She wrapped her arm around Nyota’s shoulders. “If it’s what they think it is, it might not be easy to fix. I might get very sick.”

Nyota didn’t really know what that meant. Her mother was watching her like she expected some kind of reaction, but she didn’t know what kind she was supposed to be having, so she pulled her knees up to her chin and pressed her mouth into the rough fabric of her school skirt.

“It might be something else, though.” Said M’Umbha, her hand dropping to rub small circles on Nyota’s back. “It might be something they can easily fix. We don’t know yet, so there’s no point worrying.”

Worried. That was how Nyota ought to feel. She didn’t really understand what about yet, but that didn’t stop the emotion from sinking over her, pulling down the corners of lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope y'all liked it. Come find me on tumblr as geektasticandalsodorktacular if you want to cry about tiny vulcans.


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